BAINBRIDGE ISLAND - Douglas Ostling slumped down inside his attic bedroom and gripped the leg that had just taken two rounds from a police officer's gun. Outside the mentally ill man's locked door, and just down a narrow stairwell, several law enforcement officers gathered. Ostling had menaced two officers with an ax, and no one was taking chances in what they perceived as a potentially deadly confrontation.

Ostling's parents, who lived in the adjacent home, pleaded for police to allow them to unlock the door and check on their 43-year-old son. When police refused, the Ostlings urged police to use a ladder to peer inside the second-story attic's skylights.

Fifteen minutes later, the ladder was in place. Yet, police decided to wait. The wait stretched beyond an hour. By the time a sheriff's deputy finally clambered up the ladder and spotted Ostling, more than 75 minutes had elapsed since the shots were fired, and much of Ostling's blood had pooled around his lifeless body.

Documents from law enforcement's investigation into the shooting recently released to the Kitsap Sun give a clearer picture of just how quickly the situation between Ostling and Bainbridge police escalated, and how slowly officers worked to determine the damage done. The Ostling family says police let Douglas Ostling bleed to death.

According to the 911 dispatch log, police were first alerted to the Ostling home on Springridge Road at 8:39 p.m. A male voice presumed to be Ostling's had yelled incoherently at the dispatcher before hanging up less than two minutes later.

Bainbridge officers Jeff Benkert and David Portrey arrived at the home 15 minutes after the call was received. Ostling's father, William Ostling, greeted the officers at the front door but said he knew nothing about the 911 call. He mentioned that his mentally ill son, who lives in an attic room above the adjacent garage, may have called police.

Portrey later told Kitsap County sheriff's detectives, who handled the investigation into the shooting, that Douglas Ostling had ordered him and Benkert off the property and refused to open his door. Portrey, in a statement to the sheriff's office, told Ostling they would not leave until he presented himself. Just as the door was unlocked with a key provided by the Ostling family, Portrey said Ostling swung it open and began yelling unintelligibly while holding an ax above his head. Portrey fired a Taser, but it failed to connect properly with Ostling. Feeling that his partner was in danger, Benkert fired three shots before Ostling retreated back behind the door.

The shots were fired at 8:59 p.m., five minutes after police arrived, according to the 911 log. Two minutes later, police requested medical aid for Ostling and reported that they were unsure whether he was hit.

At 9:05 p.m., backup arrived. Bainbridge police officers Walt Berg and Carla Sias were the first to join Portrey and Benkert. William Ostling told Sias that officers could use a ladder to look through the garage's skylights, its only upstairs windows.

"He mentioned he did it all the time, it was not slippery, and we would be able to check on his son," Sias wrote in a report.

A Bainbridge Island Fire Department medical unit arrived at the police perimeter at the end of the Ostling home's long driveway at 9:08 p.m., according to BIFD records. They were told to stay put until police declared the scene secured.

Meanwhile, Sias and Berg had put the ladder in place by 9:15 p.m., 16 minutes after the shooting.

Inexplicably, the officers decided not to scale the ladder.

"We decided against doing this at that time," Berg wrote in a report.

Berg then received word that several sheriff's deputies were on their way, including several SWAT members, and that he was reassigned to monitor the scene's perimeter.

More than an hour later, at 10:16 p.m., a sheriff's deputy scaled the ladder and was able to see Ostling through the skylight. Once the gunshot wounds were confirmed, medical aid units were permitted to treat Ostling, who was dead by this time.

A deputy at the scene mentions in a report that there was some concern that the garage roof was too steep and wet for officers to safely scale it.

However, the deputy who eventually mounted the roof was reported to have climbed up the ladder, crawled along the roof's peak and looked in the window in of time span of about two minutes. Police also had a key to the room but did not use it after the first attempt at entering Ostling's room.

Bainbridge Police Chief Jon Fehlman, who was at the scene at 9:31 p.m., declined to say why it took 77 minutes for officers to check on Ostling after the shooting.

Even if Bainbridge police had checked on Ostling earlier, his chances of survival may have been limited to just a few minutes.

According to Kitsap County Prosecutor Russ Hauge, who determined that the shooting was justified, one of the bullets that struck Ostling severed his femoral artery, one of two matching trunk lines that supply blood to the legs.

Each heartbeat would have pumped a large quantity of blood through this major artery, and immediate medical aid would have been required.

Police photos of Ostling after he was found dead show him gripping his left leg in what may have been an attempt to stop the blood loss.

The Ostling family plans to sue Bainbridge police, arguing that Ostling was not a threat to police, and that police improperly delayed medical aid.